Notes and Editorial Reviews

...Bergonzi’s Alfredo in this recording is one of his best assumptions on record. His voice is at its lightest with near perfect legato and with phrasing that other tenors can only aspire to. He launches Alfredo’s Brindisi with aplomb. He fully encompasses the emotions of act 2 as first Alfredo luxuriates in his and Violetta’s existence in the country in Lunge de lei and then realises who is paying the bills and then what his father is demanding. Despite my enthusiasm for those contributions from Bergonzi, it is in the duet Parigi o cara with Violetta that he and Sutherland really produce the vocal goods and do justice to Verdi’s magnificent and painfully dramatic creation. As Alfredo’s father Germont, Robert Merrill is vocally secure,Read more refulgent of tone and expressive... [H]is singing of Di provenza il mar, as he tries to tempt Alfredo back home, is exemplary and a great strength of the performance... John Pritchard conducts with a nice feel for Verdian cantilena and gives the singers time for their phrasing whilst not losing dramatic impetus. The recording is on the warm side without muddying the clarity of the orchestra and singers.

-- Robert J Farr, MusicWeb International [4/2007]reviewing the complete Traviata

...the Philips set [is] carefully cast, impeccably recorded and produced, and conducted with a care and expertise which may surprise some of Sinopoli's more extreme detractors... The merit of [Sinopoli's] reading is its clarity, power and poise... Bruson has more variety and humanity in his singing of the great soliloquy than either Milnes (Bonynge) or Cappuccilli (Giulini). He also makes much of the long and complex postlude to "Cortigiani". The "Piangi, fanciulla" in the reconciliation with Gilda is sung (and conducted) with remarkable breadth and grandeur of utterance, and the vengeance cabaletta is strong without being hectic: an interesting piece of self-discipline on Sinopoli's part... [A]s Gilda...Gruberova, cool but not chilly, sympathetic, technically flawless, is very fine. There is nothing pert or soubrettish about her reading: the girl's inner resolve—an inner strength which puts her in a line of young heroines which can be traced back to Shakespeare's Juliet and Desdemona—is never in doubt... The comprimario roles are strongly cast... This new set offers an intelligent appraisal of the great work. It is a joy to listen to from the technical point of view and has in Bruson a singer who in the mature flowering of his art more than once allows us to glimpse Rigoletto's majesty and his awful capacity for compassion.

...I found this set immensely enjoyable. Solti's Italianate thrust often simulates the excitement of a live performance and, after rather tentative beginnings from all members of his cast, his singers catch the nervous, Toscanini-like intensity of his reading. Price rids herself of an initial huskiness to give of her superb best in the Nile Scene and the final duet. Gorr...brings the house down—metaphorically speaking—in her great fourth-act encounter, with Radames and is even more thrilling in her denunciation of the accusing high priests... The Jon Vickers of around 1961, was a more flexible, fresher-voiced singer than he is today, as you can hear by setting his performance here... He is at his most eloquent at "Morir, si pura e bella" in the finale... It is good to hear a true operahouse chorus rather than the ad hoc bodies often used these days, and the Rome Opera Orchestra, especially the brass, are galvanised into playing above themselves by Solti.

-- Gramophone [11/1970]reviewing the original LP of the complete Aida, available as Decca 417416

Excellent value on Philips Duo is the 1980 Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, account, idiomatically conducted by Colin Davis and with the entire cast, led by a heroic Carreras and eloquent Ricciarelli, on fine vocal form. It slightly hangs fire dramatically – a live recording might just have provided those extra frissons of risk and excitement – but it compares favourably with more illustrious golden-age accounts.